Thursday, July 14, 2016

A farm boy accidentally overturned his wagonload of wheat on
the road. The farmer who lived nearby came to investigate.

“Hey, Willis,” he called out, “forget your troubles for a while and come and
have dinner with us. Then I’ll help you overturn the wagon.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Willis answered, “but I don't think Dad would like
me to.”

“Aw, come on, son!” the farmer insisted.

“Well, okay,” the boy finally agreed, “but Dad won’t like it.”

After a hearty dinner, Willis thanked the host. “I feel a lot better now, but I
know Dad’s going to be real upset.”

“Don’t be silly!” said the neighbor. “By the way, where is he?”

“Under the wagon,” replied Willis.

Willis and the Good Samaritan farmer lived in a different era than we do today.
While we all want to be good neighbors, the meaning of “neighborliness” has
changed as the culture has changed from community to cocooning, from country to
city, from slow food to fast food, from the dining room to the game room.

People don’t drop by or drop in like they used to — and, what’s more, we don’t
want them to!

That’s not true everywhere. Take Deer Isle, off the rural coast in Downeast
Maine, for example. It’s still expected that neighbors give the time necessary
whenever an unexpected visitor drops by a home, or stops to talk at the post
office, or visits in the aisles of The Galley grocer.

It’s part of the island charm, but it’s also necessary to survival there.
Social visiting is how island news travels. It’s faster by mouth than it is by
the island’s weekly newspaper. Visiting is how islanders find out “right quick”
whose house burned down, or whose boat sunk in the last blow; and it’s how
islanders always find out a way to help. In places like that — where it’s hard
to get to and tougher to get off — neighbors must help neighbors.

Even the non-church-goers believe it’s their Christian duty to give help unto
others, as you would have them give help unto you. They say, “What goes around,
comes around.” And “It don’t mattah if it’s your enemy in trouble. You help,
anyways.” So, there’s often a fund-raiser potluck for the child with cancer, or
a church “chowdah suppah” for the mission project in Belize, or an island-wide
house-raising party for the family without enough insurance who got burned out.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a native islander of 13 generations, or a newcomer
or a stranger. Everybody pitches in; everybody visits.

It’s said that a good tide raises everybody’s boats together. All this good neighborliness
starts with social calls, and makes for a much stronger sense of community and
connectedness.

“Bad manners,” our great-grandparents would have said if we ignored such social
conventions. You weren’t supposed to ignore a neighbor. In pre-phone America,
dropping by for an unannounced visit was customary. It was how community folks
and families stayed in touch. It was the social glue. Visits were expected, and
patterns for visitation were formalized: Never arrive before the lunch hour for
a “morning visit,” for example; half an hour for a formal visit was sufficient.
Formal visitors never removed their coats ... and so forth. Homes had public
space for social matters, and private space for family matters.

All that’s changed. Despite the fact that face time on Facebook or Skype actually
makes us happy — an ongoing series of studies has discovered that people with
many personal contacts tend to be happier than people with a small number of
personal contacts — we consider folks who drop by to be just interruptions in
our daily schedule. Most of us don’t like to be interrupted when we are going
about our Very Important Tasks. We’ve got things to do, and places to be.

Studies show that in rural towns and in city minority neighborhoods there are
places where “stopping by” still exists, and it may even be on the rise. Social
calling might be increasing in these places because they’re still working as
tight-knit communities toward survival, improvement and change. It takes
teamwork, which takes meeting with neighbors face to face. They know that they
have to put in face time.

But, by using our communication devices, we can’t shake a hand, we can’t see
into each other’s eyes, we can’t lean on a shovel in the garden, talking over
the peas, or in a home kitchen, smelling the coffee brewing, and we can’t hear
the conviviality of pleasantly shared silence.

We can’t do that unless we visit ... in person. There’s just something about
being with each other, about taking the time to talk, eye to eye, that makes
such a God-graced difference in community unity.

That’s exactly what didn’t happen when the temple priest and the Levite
traveled on that road to Jericho from Jerusalem when given the chance to help
face to face. Instead of taking the time to trouble themselves about the other
fellow’s troubles, they gave him a quick glance and a wide berth, and walked on.

Granted, the temple priests were ritually pure and were not permitted to touch
a dead body, which is what the priest might be thinking about the man lying in
the road. Touching the close-to-dead man would have ruined his day by making
him ritually impure, thereby preventing him from going about his Very Important
Business for God.

The Levite, on the same journey as the priest, goes in close, viewing the
wounded man almost face to face, but he, too, walks on.

We know that the robbed and wounded man was Jewish. So was the priest;
likewise, the Levite. This means they were of the same community. It’s like
when an American travels in exotic Kazakhstan and meets another American in
trouble. It doesn’t matter if he’s a Republican from Montana and you’re a
Democrat from Missouri, or that you’ve never met before. What matters is you’re
both Americans and he desperately needs help.

But you refuse aid, later to learn that a Shiite Muslim, discovering his
plight, opens his heart and his wallet to take care of his emergency.

The priest and the Levite both have the chance to do what needs to be done —
but they don’t.

Their misunderstanding of what’s important, of what matters, actually gets
in the way of their compassion, their humanity and their faith.

They fail to act. They fail to see. They fail to feel.

They turn their faces away. They don’t just turn the other cheek; they turn
their backs to suffering.

The Samaritan stops to assist. He puts in face time. He stops by for a helpful
visit. He shows Samaritan behavior that we know should really be “Christian
behavior.”

The Samaritan stopped, got off his donkey, and used his own olive oil to pour
on the man’s wounds. He used a type of oil that wasn’t cheap, an oil that
fueled the Roman Empire. It lit oil lamps and soothed cracked, sore feet. It
was the prime commodity, the petroleum of its day.

On top of this, the Samaritan used his own wine as an antiseptic. He lifts his
human burden, risking his own back. He pays two days’ wages and offers more,
whatever the cost, on his return. All this for a man he doesn’t know; for a man
who was, until that moment, not his neighbor.

The question for us is: What do we pour on the wounds of the oppressed, the
hungry, the at-risk and the marginalized of our community. Do we offer our
time, the kindness of words, the thoughtfulness of right actions, the warmth of
an embrace, the generosity of our resources — or do we offer indifference,
ignorance, scorn, judgment? Do we pout salt in the wounds, or anoint them with
the oil of compassion? Do we add injury to insult? Do we add assault rifle to a
Beretta M9?

A Sunday school teacher was telling her class the story of the Good Samaritan,
describing how he was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. She retold the
situation in vivid detail so her students could visualize the drama.

Then she asked the class, “If you saw a person lying on the roadside all
wounded and bleeding, what would you do?”

We wouldn’t throw up, but we might give up. Being a neighbor in a postmodern
culture that stresses anonymity over community, reserve over compassion, me-ism
over other-ism, challenges our commitment. It might mean crossing social lines,
or cultural divides. It might mean figuring out who is our neighbor by simply
sharing 15 minutes across the hedge, or lending a hand to a stranger, or
talking at the bus stop to the face you see every day and never acknowledge, or
making eye contact on the sidewalk, or in the hallway, or even stopping to save
a life.

Imagine what can happen in our church and community if we learn to know our
neighbors’ faces and lives, and begin to connect like Samaritans who take the
time to help. Imagine what can happen in our world if we start to re-enact this
classic story about somebody from outside the neighborhood, from the wrong
neighborhood, who willingly drops by and lends assistance.

Imagine that we begin to behave like neighbors. That’s what Jesus is talking
about, really. That’s what he is telling us to do.

My neighbor across the street never ever shies from waving
to me. He never ever shies from jogging over to tell me if someone stopped by
while I was gone. He never ever shies from jogging over to tell me if he saw
something he felt suspicious about at the church or my home.

What about us? Although we often say we are willing to help, like good
Christians should, we rarely drop by and do anything. Although we often see the
need, far too often we don’t make the effort to get off our donkeys, lift up
fallen persons, and escort them to safety.

The victims of our world — and there are many — would like us to drop by and
stop by.

Anything less is to fail at our mission.

Let us pray.

Father God, in a world with ever increasing violence, You
can be the answer we need. You taught us that “While Youwere still speaking to the people, behold, Your mother and Your brothers stood outside, asking to speak to You. But You replied to the man
who told You, “Who is my mother, and
who are my brothers?” And stretching out Your hand toward Your disciples, You said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!
For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and
mother.”

Dear merciful Father, we ask that You fill us with Your
mercy; fill us with Your compassion; fill us with Your wisdom; and fill us with
Your love such as that of the Good Samaritan. Help us to know violence is not
the answer to our difficult world. Hate is not an answer to different faiths,
races or lifestyles. Help us to be patient as injustice is resolved in
civilized ways and not with the taking of other lives. One wrong does not make
another right. One death does not bring back to life another.

Help each of us this day, to take some time quietly in Your
presence. Help us to be open to Your Omnipotence and Omnipresence. Help us to
open our “sixth” sense to feel Your awesome spiritual presence that we so need
to feel that we may calm our troubled hearts and remember that we are all
neighbors; we are all Your brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. We ask all
this through Christ our Lord. Amen.